KYIV (Reuters) – New rules to stop Ukrainian agricultural exports below official minimum prices will start in August at the earliest, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said late on Wednesday.
The new export pricing mechanism will apply to shipments of wheat, corn, sunflower oil, soybeans, rapeseed and some other agricultural products.
Disruption due to the war with Russia has led to domestic purchases of some agricultural products from Ukraine and exports at artificially low prices to avoid taxes.
The government of Ukraine has drawn up calculations to establish minimum export prices for some agricultural products in order to increase revenues.
According to the new rules, the minimum allowable export prices will be calculated based on state customs data, taking into account the delivery conditions of the previous month and with a 10% discount.
“I don’t expect this to happen before August,” Deputy Agriculture Minister Mykhailo Sokolov said in an online meeting with analysts and traders.
The Ukrainian parliament in May approved changes to a law introducing the new rules and Sokolov said the law would come into force on July 1.
Sokolov said that it is still necessary to adopt a series of government documents to launch the minimum price mechanism, but did not give an exact date when the new procedure will begin.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Michael Perry)
